Adaptable? Animatatable?

Got two of these fellows. Bit small and they don't bend too well. Not sure if they could be used as animation puppets. However, I'm reasonably sure I can adapt them as marionettes. Tonight we will see what surgery can do. Will post some diagrams later. 

PS That's Ruth behind them.

Organising the Digital Diploma Course

Have spent today looking at formal mind maps.

Now in 3D

I just love proper three dimensional images. Last year I got a new camera, the Fuji W3 which has made me very happy. Since then I have added a 3D photo frame which to be honest barely works and I am struggling with the tools in Photoshop to process the images.  I'll post some soon. This is not the first 3D camera that I've had. I have a Nimslo and two others. Plus I built a 3D movie camera. Here's some pix of the camera and frame.

Starting the Automata - work in progress.

Pu

This is a project long in the thinking stage. Basically it's an animated, interactive display, modelled on the animated tableau that used to be in seaside amusement arcades. They're all gone now - although there's a fine collection in Rye at the Heritage centre.

The plan for this one is to make a working fortune teller, although if it looks anything like these pictures then it will be a surprise. The visible part will be an animated puppet, and the hidden controls will be based on servos and probably controlled by an Arduino or a Crumble - I like the Crumble because it's simple and cheap, although it may not have the versatility to do what I want it to do.

These sketches are just trying to work out a prototype. Brought some balsa wood yesterday to make one up and trying to decide what it should look like. Was going to use ceramics for the puppets, but clay is just far too heavy.

In case you're wondering how the puppet will tell your fortune, you'll have to wait for a later blog post when I've worked out some technical details.

Building the Dalek spaceship, thoughts on imagination.

So, for the princely sum of £2.99 I got a 480 piece Lego knock-off construction toy that built a Dalek spaceship. It also included two small Dalek figures to make up the crew.

 

My first attempt at construction met with disaster. The saucer simply collapses under it's own weight. Not surprised. It got lousy reviews on Amazon - mainly about being difficult to assemble.

This is the start of the second attempt. Decided that I would use glue to hold it together. I know for die-hard Lego users this is heresy, but I don't care. I don't suppose I'm ever going to "play" with the model - in fact I imagine I won't have a clue what I'm going to do with it once it's make.

Here you can see the base drying slowly.

For the record it's pipe cement for joining PVC and ABS plumbing components that I'm using.

Two small Daleks look on. Somewhere I have some others this size. I realised at this point in my mind I was consulting them on their spaceship.

If I did this again I would lay out all the parts in order before starting. At least I hope I would. Finding the parts became a major exercise and I began sorting them out for each spread once I was half way through.

More sorting, I'm onto the smaller parts - the laser guns, internal parts etc. I'm beginning to realise that the box version (see below) isn't quite the same as the version in the box.

This is the more-or-less completed insides of the spaceship. There's a similar sized Dalek from somewhere else inside there and there's a Cyberman and a Lego nudist.

Overall it's quite a satisfactory feeling. I thought the lack of detail would make this a bit boring. In fact it's been the opposite, part of me went back and I found that the small blocks - like making something with large pixels actually acted as a vehicle for the imagination - imagining things that were there rather than having them very explicit.

This is the completed top. Notice that there are bricks missing. I'm not sure if I have put the wrong bits elsewhere on the model or if they were never there.

I went back through each stage, obviously, having glued it together disassembly wasn't going to happen; but I couldn't see where they might have gone.

I had four other bricks left over, which would imply that somewhere the bricks were wrong - but if they were they were well hidden. Someday, if I'm lucky or can be bothered I'll find something to fill in those gaps.

Here's a close-up of the Cyberman and the Lego nudist. She was a joke I played many years ago on a friend who worked for Lego's model making department at the time. Originally there were three of them.

Below is the finished thing. Like most project like this, what do you do with it now? Guess it will sit around for a bit and then be consigned to a box somewhere...

If I did this an I would use the left-over holes around the middle to put some lights in. Probably I would start from the outside and then build the insides as well. But I have no intention of building another, although I might try something similar if it was sufficiently cheap.

Home Bargains, a local discount out let is where this came from and where other stuff like it has come from. I always think of it as somewhere that unsuccessful toys go to die.

This is the box cover. There's several differences between the finished project and the illustration on the cover. 

Clever Colourful Coffee House

So, I saw this at a coffee shop/bar in Weymouth recently. I thought this was a very clever way of having a menu and a guide to various drinks that were available.

I also thought that the illustrations of how the coffee was made were informative and clever. Too bad they only did two that I could see.

Here's the tea menu, coloured to show how you should expect your tea - excellent for pointing out what you wanted as well - given that Weymouth is a cross-channel port and possibly the arrivals' english is as bad as my attempts at their language.

This is the coffee menu - note two shot as standard and fine drink it was as well.

You can see smaller versions of the cup diagrams on it; but I must admit I have no idea why the Chocolate one is a bit bigger. The bar staff didn't know either.